---- PRESENTED BY ALBEMARLE COUNTY & RELAY FOODS ----

Tom Yum is a community food festival based in Downtown Charlottesville and celebrating local food innovators at the Charlottesville City Market. In 2011, Forbes named Charlottesville the “locavore capital of the world." On Saturday, April 13th, come meet the farmers, chefs, artisans, and pioneers in sustainable food and see what all the fuss is about.

Play with your food. Learn about your food. And eat your food. It's a day of hands-on workshops, food talks, culinary demos, and tastings. Try your hand at market-scene sketching and games. Revel in the sights and sounds of live bluegrass and classical music in a parking lot transformed into a pop-up park.

Grab your groceries at the market, participate in the arts and music at Tom Yum, and stick around for the Food Talks. This event is totally free and designed for the whole family. Bring an appetite, a sketchbook, and plan to stay a while.

------------------- FOOD TALKS -------------------

9:00 – 9:30 Eating Sustainably: Community Supported Fisheries / C'ville Food Co.
9:30 – 10:00 Raising Chickens the Easy Way / Countryside Organics
10:00 – 10:30 Beekeeping for Beginners / Grubby Girl
10:30 – 11:00 Running a Small Business with Family / NoBull Burger
11:00 – 11:30 Made To Order Kombucha: Handcrafted Opportunity / MTO Kombucha
11:30 – 12:00 Attracting Wildflowers and Pollinators / C'ville Foodscapes
12:00 – 12:30 Olive Oil Odyssey: The Truth about Extra Virginity / Rare Lynx Olive Oil
12:30 – 1:00 Babes in the Wood: Raising Forest-Fed Pigs / Babes in the Wood

 
------------------- POP UP PARK -------------------

Hill & Holler and Fifth Season will transform parking spaces on South Street into an urban park with landscaping and farmhouse-style seating.

OUTDOOR GRILLING: Best of What’s Around will be providing your first taste of grill season with grass-fed beef from Scottsville.

LIVE MUSIC: Tom Yum will be filled with lively music throughout the day. BON drummers will perform in a drum circle, followed by a Mama Gato concert, bluegrass, classical, and busking musicians.

URBAN SKETCHING: Architect, Jessie Chapman of Sketchwell Architecture and Design, invites you to grab a pen, paintbrush, or pencil and capture the bustling scene at the Farmers Market as part of the 39th Worldwide Sketch Crawl.

------------------- CHEF DEMOS -------------------

“BEYOND THE FLAVOR” with 4 Local Chefs: Sarah Cramer and Andrea Hubbell are the photographers and writers bring their blog, Beyond the Flavor, to life by inviting 4 of their favorite Charlottesville chefs to cook live, sharing their recipes and techniques with the community.

Dean Maupin of C+O Restaurant
Angelo Vangelopoulos of the Ivy Inn
Harrison Keevil of Brookville
Mark Gresge of l'Etoile

TASTE EDUCATION: Sample MTO Kombucha’s exceptional flavor combinations, like Lime Basil or Apple Cinnamon. Learn what true extra virgin olive oil looks and tastes like with Rare Lynx Olive Oil.

POP (Power of Produce) CLUB: Play with your food! Kids will love this interactive tasting experience, brought to you by the Local Food Hub. POP Club will engage all the senses to think about veggies in a new way: see, touch, feel, smell, and taste the flavor.

WEED SALAD BAR: Pat McCafferty and his students from Mountaintop Montessori School will host an assembly-line style Weed Salad Bar lined with edible weeds. Pat will also lead an Edible Weed Walk throughout the warehouse district in downtown Charlottesville.

------------------- LOCAL FOOD INNOVATORS -------------------

JEFFERSON’S BACKYARD: What better way to celebrate Founders Day than to take home a keepsake of Thomas Jefferson’s garden? Pick up your heritage seeds from Monticello’s Center for Historic Plants at their Tom Yum tent. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange will bring you a sneak peek of Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival. Albemarle County will also conduct flash seminars about native plants on behalf of the Jefferson Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society.

DIY URBAN FOOD GROWING: C’ville Foodscapes, a worker-owned cooperative business, transforms backyards, patios, and kitchens into food-producing gardens in and around Charlottesville. C’ville Foodscapes will lead hands-on workshops.

COUNTRYSIDE ORGANICS: No stranger to food activism after fighting Monsanto on genetic drift, this organic feed mill from Waynesboro supplies everyone from backyard gardeners to large-scale farmers the resources they need to produce the highest quality food. Through organic feed, soil nutrients, and education Countryside Organics ensure that local food has a viable future in our community.

MAPPING FOOD CULTURE; YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW: The Virginia Food Heritage Project is a collaborative, community-based project that envisions a greater understanding and documentation of our food heritage to enhance regional sustainability and resilience. VFHP’s Interactive Food Heritage Portal gathers information through mapping, stories, and photographs to identify at-risk, place-based heritage foods, seeds, agricultural sites, and food production areas in the Central Piedmont region. With VFHP, get your story or memory on the map and reveal the food history of the Piedmont. With Piedmont Environmental Council you can map what local food looks like today and shape the cultural landscape of the future.